


Putting The 'Agony' In Agony Aunts

by kawada_s



Series: Main Universe [10]
Category: Battle Royale - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-11
Updated: 2017-03-11
Packaged: 2018-10-02 15:56:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10221950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kawada_s/pseuds/kawada_s
Summary: The Kiriyama family become agony aunts. In response to a nasty answer Ryuhei gave someone that Sho thinks deserves better, he decides to start plotting, leading to an awkward outing with Hirono, Haruka and Yoshimi at the mall. Kyoichi just wants his friend Desmond back - is that too much to ask?





	

Putting The ‘Agony’ In Agony Aunts

When she had proposed the idea of a school newspaper after coming back from Christmas break, Noriko Nakagawa had definitely had some sort of idea of what she hoped it would be like. Unfortunately, after the idea was approved, she was not counting on a family event occurring that would take her out of school for awhile before she could even assemble the staff. Before she had left, she had decided to place the paper in the capable hands of Kyoichi Motobuchi, both because he needed something to cheer him up, and due to the fact that when he had heard she was looking for a temporary editor, he’d followed her around all day squealing ‘pick me, pick me’ and had even gone the extra mile by buying her a cake.

No one else had approached her about the temporary editor position, and he seemed rather passionate about the whole idea, so Kyoichi for editor it was. When he’d been informed, he couldn’t be more happier, and immediately went about finding staff. He managed to get Tatsumichi Oki and Shuya Nanahara to collaborate on a sports column, with Shuya also writing music reviews, Shinji Mimura to write a ‘Meme of the Week’ segment (which had sadly been cut by Mr. Hayashida), Yoshimi Yahagi to work on a fashion column, and he’d managed to get a few people from other classes on board too.

At their first official meeting, Shuya had proposed an idea that seemed absolutely genius to Kyoichi: an agony aunt page. After all, they were all teenagers, going through things, and at times, they’d definitely need someone to talk to – maybe their peers could offer some advice? Kyoichi had immediately gotten the idea approved by Mr. Hayashida and was looking forward to the column appearing in the paper, but there was one major issue – he couldn’t find any agony aunts.

When the due date for the first issue was looming and there were still no agony aunts in sight, he decided to ask his class, wondering if there would be any interest. If anything, he expected maybe Yukie or someone in her group might take up the job. What he certainly did not expect was for Kazuo Kiriyama to place down his book, daintily marking his place with a bookmark, stating that he and his group would take the job, as it was a new experience to try. Kyoichi, both due to being certain that no one else would take the job and because it was _Kazuo_ who had spoke up, had told them the job was there. A post box then set up in the hallway, and the students of Shiroiwa Junior High were invited to place their woes inside, and hopefully, they’d appear in the paper’s next issue.

The school paper was on issue two now, and things seemed to be going reasonably well for the agony aunts. Kazuo came into the room that had been appointed as the Kiriyama family’s office, with a decent size bag containing all the letters for the week. There were less letters than there had been last week, due to more people finding out that the Kiriyama family were the agony aunts, but there were still enough of them to keep the column going.

“What do we have today?” Ryuhei smirked, leaning back in his chair. Kazuo passed him a pile of letters and with amusement in his eyes, Ryuhei began to sort through them. “God, the people who write in are so pathetic.”

“I can take some letters,” Hiroshi said quietly. In the background, taking priority over Hiroshi’s mumbling, Ryuhei read out someone’s letter about a failing relationship. Before he could take the letters from Kazuo, taking no response as it being okay to do so, Mitsuru jumped in and took them instead, sitting down in a chair beside the Boss.

“Go clean the office, Hiroshi. That’s your job,” Sho smirked, then went back to typing furiously on his laptop. He helped with some of the letters, but also co-wrote the fashion column with Yoshimi and wrote a few movie reviews when the paper needed them. He had good taste, and needed to share it with the world.

“Look at this one,” Mitsuru frowned at as he read out a letter. “Help: I’ve lost my pet rabbit somewhere in the school. It’s been quite a few months now, and I miss him a lot. Come back, Junya. Regards, Having a lost bunny isn’t funny.”

Ryuhei looked at his phone background nervously, which was of his pet rabbit. He’d found the scared little thing wandering around the school quite awhile ago now, and had managed to keep it a secret from the Family, and was planning to keep it that way. It would completely ruin his self-proclaimed ‘badass’ image. He was not planning to give it back, though. From the sound of the letter, it belonged to Kaori Minami, and there was no way he would ever give anything to that _loser._ No one was going to take Ryuhei Jr. from him.

“Tell them to purchase another rabbit, and to this time, keep a better eye on it,” Kazuo said blankly. Mitsuru looked at him like he’d just given him the best idea ever, and quickly began to work on a response.

Ryuhei continued to go through his own stack of letters, throwing the ones that bored him either in the shredder or onto Sho’s pile for him to deal with. Every now and then, he’d scrawl out a rather rude reply to someone, which he would laugh hysterically over until Mitsuru told him to shut the fuck up and stop disturbing the Boss’s work, and the cycle would continue. It was only broken when he pulled a letter out of the pile that he immediately knew the author of.

‘Dear Agony Aunts,

I had a piece of property stolen from me, and while I saw the identity of the thief in plain sight and they frequently carry around the stolen item with them (which everyone in my class precisely knows belongs to me,) they refuse to give it back whenever I confront them about it. It also does not help that this individual is rather scary, so going to a teacher will not sort out this issue. Please give me assistance. I really miss you, Desmond.

Regards,

Wailing Worksheet Lover.’

It was Kyoichi, of course – who else at their school wrote so formally and owned something named Desmond? It had been impossible to miss lately that he was in a state of utter melancholy after Mitsuko Souma had stolen his only friend, which was Desmond, his frog umbrella. When he had made it painfully obvious that the loss of his friend was causing him agony, Mitsuko only felt that it gave her even less of a reason to give it back. She now carried it everywhere. Everyone in Class 3-B wanted her to give back the damn umbrella, simply to shut him up.

While he usually would have put letters like that through the shredder, Ryuhei instead placed the letter in his pocket. Kyoichi’s writing was rather nice to look at… not that he’d ever admit it out loud. He heard a whine outside and he looked out the window to see Kyoichi running after the Souma gang. As expected, Desmond was in Mitsuko’s hands, and she was dragging the umbrella across the floor.

“That’s not how you treat an umbrella!” Kyoichi shrieked through his tears. Mitsuko continued on. Hopefully, he would just leave her alone when yet again, he’d figure out that she wouldn’t be giving him back his umbrella.

“How do you treat an umbrella, then?” Mitsuko stopped for a moment to look at him, a frown on her face. “I’d ask you to show me how, but wait… you don’t have one anymore.”

Mitsuko let out a laugh and walked faster, Hirono and Yoshimi following. Kyoichi decided to give up for the day after that, and instead decided to weep.

Ryuhei decided that was the right time to look away from the pathetic display, having seen more than enough. He went back to his letters, and after shredding a few more, he had reached the end of his pile – well, almost the end. When he went to leave, he found one more letter on the floor under his chair. He decided to read it, just to humour himself.

‘Hey, I’m not really sure how to start this letter, so hi I guess. I have a bit of a problem, concerning one of my friends. We’ve been best friends since elementary school, and in this past year, I’ve realised that I like her… like her like her. I’m not sure how to go about it… things are pretty complicated. Is there any advice do you think you could offer me about the situation? Signed, Completely Crushed.

Ryuhei burst out laughing as soon as he finished reading, and quickly read it aloud to the group. Hiroshi laughed for awhile, but the rest of them were quiet. Dejected, Ryuhei sat down and set about to write the rudest response he could possibly think of. Mr. Hayashida hadn’t really checked on the newspaper since the Kiriyama family became a part of it (mostly because he was afraid of them), and while he was the editor, Kyoichi didn’t get much of a say when it came to the agony aunt column, so he was sure it would make it into the paper. This was the best part of the job – making fun of people he thought were pathetic.

When he began to read out his response to Completely Crushed’s letter, Sho looked up from his laptop. He was pretty sure the author of the letter was Haruka Tanizawa, and he knew she deserved much better than a shitty response from Ryuhei. He felt like his hands were tied, though. He would never ever give away her secret, but at the same time, he didn’t want Ryuhei to get away with such a shitty response.

A smirk crossed his face as he thought of the perfect plan. It was so perfect that it wouldn’t just help Haruka, either. All he had to do was wait for tomorrow, and then he could set it all in motion.

\---

Haruka Tanizawa came to school the next morning anxiously awaiting for the school newspapers to be ready. While she knew she was probably getting her hopes too high – after all, it was the _Kiriyama family_ behind the agony aunt column – she just couldn’t help but feel anxious to read what reply she’d hopefully be getting. She’d never really asked anyone explicitly for advice on her crush on Yukie. It had come up in a late night conversation with Hirono and in texts with Sho, but other than that, there was nothing. With the whole system being set up to be anonymous, she figured it wouldn’t hurt to send a message. None of them would probably know it was her.

At lunch, the papers were finally ready, some even still slightly warm from the printer, and she quickly lined up to purchase her copy. Kyoichi had told her she could have it for free if she got Desmond back for him, but she told him it was fine, and there would be no trouble paying for it. Trying to ignore the mournful look that had returned to his face, she walked off, paper in hand.

She sat down on a bench outside, grateful her friends were too busy to come looking for her, and began to flick through the paper. She read a few of Sho’s movie reviews and read the volleyball report Yukie had written this week for the sports column due to Shuya being ill, trying not to make it obvious that she was desperate to get to the agony aunts page. When she got to it eventually, she scanned through a few questions until she finally found her own.

When she read it, her heart stopped.

‘Completely Crushed,

This is probably the most pathetic letter I’ve ever read. Stop whining. Either do something, or forget about it. You’re probably in the friend zone anyway. Get a life.

From The Best Agony Aunt Ever’

Frowning, Haruka shut the paper and threw it in the bin, wanting to completely forget about the response, but how awful it had made her feel she was sure was going to stick with her. As she got up, she heard her phone buzz, and she quickly checked it, finding a text from Sho. For some reason, he wanted to meet her on the school roof. She decided to go, as Sho had never been nasty to her, in fact he’d turned into an unlikely but great friend, and it would be better than being alone. He could probably cheer her up.

She made her way up to the roof, finding Sho sitting on a bench, waiting for her. She called out to him and he shot her a smile, and she took a seat beside him.

“Hey,” Haruka mumbled, getting her lunch out of her bag. “Thank you for this, but why did you want to see me?”

“It’s about the agony aunts page,” Sho said. Haruka’s eyes widened, but then realised that it was probably just Sho that made the connection, and he no doubt would have kept quiet. “Ryuhei was being an asshole, and I knew I couldn’t exactly say anything while I was there, so I thought I’d find you today and give you some real advice.”

“Oh,” Haruka looked down, but a small smile was on her face. “Thank you.”

“Honestly, I think – oh, don’t mind if I do, thanks,” Sho paused to grab some food from Haruka. She’d brought it for her group, but since they were busy and Sho was actually helping her, she figured why not give him the offer. “There’s no real right answer as to what you should do about the situation. You should tell her when you’re ready – there’s no rush. Who knows, there might be someone else out there for you. We’re only in junior high.”

“You have a point,” Haruka nodded, grateful for his kind and actually helpful advice. Sho looked at her for a moment, grateful that she looked hopeful now, and worked on choosing his next words carefully. It had to look natural. It couldn’t be obvious. If he blew this, it would look so unbelievably obvious it would hurt – and he’d probably end up dead the next day.

“You should try and get your mind off it for now, think about it when you feel better,” Sho started, trying to make it not look like he’d been thinking over his words. “Hmm, what are you doing this afternoon?”

“Nothing, really,” Haruka sighed. “We usually have volleyball practice, but Coach is sick, and Yukie’s helping Yuka, Chisato and Izumi with an assignment they left to the last minute. I’ll probably go home, do my homework and then watch TV or something.”

 _Well, that’s a bit pathetic,_ Sho thought to himself. Her plans weren’t going to stay pathetic for long, though, not if everything went according to plan.

“It’s a shame they’re all busy, but if you want to do something to get your mind off the Utsumi situation, you can hang out with us this afternoon. I’m going to the mall with Hirono and Yoshimi, and I think Hiroshi might be going too,” Sho explained. Inside, he was over the moon – everything had come out completely natural, and as a result, he knew he would live to see tomorrow.

“Oh, that sounds good,” Haruka nodded. She and Hirono had forged a friendship in the past few months, same with her and Sho, and Yoshimi and Hiroshi were probably the most harmless out of their respective gangs, so they probably wouldn’t be too bad to be around. “I’ll come.”

Sho almost threw his hands up in the air in triumph, but instead just gave her a nod and a casual reply of ‘cool.’ His plan had gone off without a hitch, just as he had mostly expected. Now, there wasn’t much he could do put hope something would happen.

\---

As soon as Hirono Shimizu saw the look on Sho’s face, she knew he had done _something._ She was good at looking through his supposed poker face on days where he actually tried, but at this moment, it was all out in the open. He had a smug look on his face as he leaned against the wall of the school, waiting for his companions, and upon seeing her, he seemed to look even more pleased with himself. She shot him a glare as she walked up to him, but it did absolutely nothing to wipe the look off his face. If anything, he only seemed to yet again look smugger.

“Tsukioka, what the fuck did you do?” Hirono demanded. Sho finally wiped the smug look off his face and stood up straight, grabbing his phone out of his pocket. “Hey. Don’t fucking ignore me. What did you do?”

“Hiroshi’s not coming. He’s going to the skate park. I bet that dumbass is gonna come in tomorrow with something either bruised or broken,” Sho said, ignoring her question. She smirked at the thought of Hiroshi falling on his face at the skate park – seriously, when would he finally realise he could _not_ ride a skateboard? – but she knew that wasn’t the real reason that he had been so smug. She was determined to get to the bottom of it, especially because she was almost completely sure he had done something that concerned her.

“Yeah, it’ll be funny to see that idiot fail again, but let’s get to the real issue here – whatever the fuck you did. It obviously will impact me, judging by that look on your face,” Hirono snapped at him. Sho looked at her and continued to feign innocence, wanting her to find it out for herself. She’d be thanking him later.

“Oh, here comes Yahagi,” Sho said, waving to Yoshimi, who immediately launched into a story about Kyoichi’s latest  attempt to get back Desmond, and how wrong it was gone. Hirono sighed, the moment to continue interrogating Sho gone, and stood there, arms folded, looking as if she had just eaten five lemons, waiting for them to move. They continued to speak however, still in place.

When they went on like this for five more minutes, she decided it was time to yell.

“WILL YOU TWO HURRY THE FUCK UP?! I CAME OUT HERE TO GO TO THE MALL, NOT ATTEND A FUCKING MOTHER’S MEETING.”

At that time, however, the final member of their party arrived, looking at Hirono with wide eyes.

“Um… is this a bad time? I can uh, go, if something’s happened,” Haruka Tanizawa stood there, looking slightly afraid.

 Immediately, Hirono started to go a shade of red and looked down, and Sho almost started to laugh, but he stopped himself at the last minute. Hirono had now solved the mystery of Sho’s smugness, and she was pissed. If he was inviting Haruka, he should have warned her, not left it a surprise. She’d need to prepare.

“No, no, it’s fine, you can come with us,” Yoshimi smiled at her. “Hirono’s just being her usual self. Ready to go?”

The other three nodded, and began to make their way to the mall. Immediately, Yoshimi took the time to go over to Haruka and tell her about a new brand of hair dye, hoping she’d find it as cool as she did, which gave Hirono the perfect chance to walk behind the two, pull out her phone, and confront Sho about the situation.

 **Hirono Shimizu:** what the fuck do you think you’re doing

 **Sho Tsukioka:** I’m helping you, idiot.

 **Hirono Shimizu:** you could have WARNED me, at least. I could have had, I don’t know, spinach in my teeth or something??

 **Sho Tsukioka:** SINCE WHEN DO YOU EAT SPINACH

 **Sho Tsukioka:** You’ll be thanking me later. Just don’t act like a dumbass (which you’ve already failed at, nice one), and you’ll be fine

 **Hirono Shimizu:** okay, one: fair point about the spinach.

 **Hirono Shimizu:** two: I DIDN’T KNOW SHE WAS THERE. it wouldn’t have happened if oh, I don’t know, GOT A FUCKING WARNING

 **Sho Tsukioka:** You can start fixing your mistakes now. I call this afternoon Operation: Make Hiroharu Happen.

 **Hirono Shimizu:** HIROHARU?? YOU GAVE US A NAME WHAT THE FUCK SHO

 **Sho Tsukioka:** Yoshimi came up with it actually, when we were talking about you two. She also knew about the plan, and thought it was absolutely genius.

 **Hirono Shimizu:** I’m seriously not sure which one of you I want to kill first.

 **Sho Tsukioka:** Like I said, you’ll be thanking me later.

\---

The group now sat in the mall food court, deciding that grabbing something to eat was the first order of business. Hirono was still furious with Sho and Yoshimi, but decided she would take this time with Haruka to her advantage (though she highly doubted it would come to anything, it was only an outing to the mall with two of the most irritating people she’d ever met), and hopefully get more time to talk to her. Due to the fact that she found most of Haruka’s group annoying, they didn’t get to hang out much at school, and only really texted most of the time. The only problem was that she had no real idea how to start the conversation.

She kicked Sho under the table and gave him a look to say _‘help,’_ and he seemed to pick up on it quickly.

“So, does anyone have any plans for the weekend?” Sho decided to go with. While he knew he was probably being much too ambitious, he wondered if his prompt could get Hirono and Haruka to end up making plans on the weekend.

Unfortunately, Yoshimi didn’t seem to pick up on this conversation started being used to help Hirono and Haruka start talking, and immediately launched into talking about her own woes.

“ _Well,_ Yoji and I had plans, but then he just cancelled! I don’t get what’s wrong with him,” Yoshimi complained. Immediately, both Sho and Hirono rolled their eyes.

“It _is_ Yoji we’re talking about here,” Sho said, taking a sip of his smoothie. “The only guy in our class – _no,_ the only guy in the _school_ , that hangs out with Kazushi. You know why no one hangs out with him, right? Because he’s _Kazushi._ That was the first red flag. And he doesn’t even care about you. You deserve someone who cares about you, Yoshimi.”

“Thank you, Sho,” Yoshimi mumbled. “I’m sure he cares. He just… had stuff to do.”

Hirono was about to snort with laughter and ridicule her supposed friend for holding so much hope on a complete loser like Yoji, but she restrained herself. It was quite a battle – on one hand, she figured that Haruka already knew what she was like, and she could damn well act like herself, but on the other hand, she figured it would be best to keep quiet this time, just to avoid a possible complaint from Sho when the day was over.

It was still his fault, she was sure of it. If he had warned her he was going to invite Haruka, she could at least have somewhat prepared. She still would have been worried about it being a mess, but it would have to be better than what had already happened.

“You should try and get your mind off him, Yoshimi,” Haruka said, recalling what Sho had told her at school earlier. “What’s something that makes you happy, that you like to do?”

“Clothes shopping, probably,” Yoshimi said after several minutes of deep thought. Haruka nodded and gave her a smile, figuring that while clothes shopping was nowhere near her own favourite thing in the world, it might be a bit more fun with a group, or she could just be pleasantly surprised.

As the group began to walk through the mall to Yoshimi’s favourite store, Hirono began to get a horrible feeling about the afternoon. This was much, much too similar to the awful day where she had been turned into the class meme after trying on the world’s most awful  dress. With Haruka in tow, anything similar that could happen would immediately become ten times more embarrassing.

For a minute, she wondered why Sho was not trying to help her out of situation, but then realised it was probably a good thing. If he made her feelings obvious, she would have to kill him then and there. Of course, that would make it all the mote obvious, but she’d be too mad to think otherwise. Her main mission now, rather than trying to interact with Haruka and hopefully get to know her better, would be to get out of this whole situation without embarrassing the hell out of herself. She was sure it was easier said than done.

\---

Hirono stared down at her watch for what felt like the hundredth time. It had been two hours now, which was both a blessing and a curse – while it was boring as hell, at least she hadn’t embarrassed herself… yet. Yoshimi still showed no sign of leaving. Sho had gone to get the group some more drinks, leaving her alone with the two girls. Yoshimi, glad to have someone new to try to make try on clothes, had her attention on Haruka when it came to trying on ugly monstrosities.

She didn’t know how Haruka could do it. She made even the worst of them look good, but she always just shook her head at Yoshimi, said it wasn’t her, and put it back on the rack. Hirono noticed that Yoshimi seemed to be a lot less pushy when it came to her, which confused her. Well, until Yoshimi had told Haruka that her wardrobe didn’t need as much saving as _someone else’s,_ and gave Hirono a look of annoyance.

Haruka had just laughed, which had melted away the glare that Hirono was planning to give to Yoshimi, and instead, she was now just waiting for Sho to come back. Hopefully, with the others preoccupied, the two could text each other and figure out the next order of business. First, she needed to get out without dying of embarrassment, but at the moment, it seemed like things were going to be okay.

Until she saw… _it_ again.

She almost jumped out of her seat when her eyes noticed something in the corner of the store. Brightly coloured, glittery, and ugly as hell, was _the_ dress. The very dress. The dress that had made her life hell, that she still saw in her dreams, or rather nightmares, and had sadly seen way too many times in real life as well after the awful day at the store.

While she would never admit it, if she saw the dress in one corner and a giant group of frogs in the other, she would go running towards the damn frogs. She hated the dress that much.

“Hello? Hirono? Earth to Hirono?” Yoshimi walked over, waving her hands in front of Hirono’s face, tearing her attention away from the dress.

“What?” Hirono snapped, though she was grateful somewhat for her friend’s action.

“I was gonna ask you your opinion on a skirt, but now I have a bigger question for you – what the hell were you looking at?” Yoshimi asked, then added in a whisper, “Haruka’s on the opposite side of the store. Find something more interesting?”

“Shut up, Yoshimi,” Hirono said back. She couldn’t notice the dress. She just couldn’t. If she did, this would easily become the worst afternoon of her life so far. Maybe even forever, as she would most likely die of embarrassment then and there.

Yoshimi looked at her, shrugged, and walked off without asking anymore questions. Hirono let out a sigh of relief and grabbed her phone, deciding that it would be better to distract herself instead of just looking around the store – her eyes would probably end up on _it_ again, and Yoshimi would once again get suspicious. This time, she doubted she’d be able to fend her off by snapping at her.

She scrolled through the class group chat for awhile, which was mostly a spam of memes from Shinji this afternoon. Some of them almost made her laugh, but then she remembered they were just dumb Shinji memes, and she told herself she would never resort to laughing at something that pathetic. She closed the chat after awhile, finding no juicy gossip or fights to laugh at, wondering yet again why Sho was taking so damn long. Was it on purpose? If it was, she was definitely going to kill him, and follow up on it this time.

Before she could send Sho a text, demanding to know how long he was going to take, she heard Yoshimi let out a gasp. It could only mean one thing. She gripped her phone tightly, almost dropping it on the ground once, as she forced herself to look up at Yoshimi, who had found… _it._

“Look, Hirono!” Yoshimi called out, holding up the monstrous thing. “Do you remember this?”

That was bad enough, but she just about died when Haruka laughed, saying that dress has been hard to forget. When Yoshimi began to insist that she try it on for old time’s sake, she felt like begging the ground to open up and swallow her whole. Unfortunately, since that didn’t seem that likely, she did the first thing that came to mind in that situation. She needed to leave it as soon as possible.

She bolted out of the store, knocking over a rack of clothing, which fell into a mannequin, it’s head rolling out of the store. On her way out, she ran right into Sho, his drinks spilling all over him. She ran away, narrowly avoiding slipping on the one that had hit the floor.

“Hey! This shirt was expensive, you know!” Sho yelled, not realising it was Hirono due to how fast she’d run away.

That had certainly been a successful afternoon.

\---

The next morning, Hirono had wanted nothing more than to stay home and sit in bed, hoping by some miracle, a meteor would hit her bedroom and make it definitely she would never have to step foot in Shiroiwa Junior High again, but she forced herself to get up and go, for two reasons. One: the thought of her idiot parents pestering her about why she wasn’t going made her feel ill, and two: she wasn’t a coward. She had to face up to the mess she’d made.

She hadn’t been inside the school for even a _minute_ before Sho walked up to her. Yoshimi was in tow, and Mitsuko walked along with her, smoking a cigarette as she bashed Desmond on the ground. She tried not to groan at the sight of her – having to tell Sho about her embarrassing exit was bad enough, and Mitsuko being there made it even worse. She would never forget it.

“Where the hell did you go yesterday?” Sho frowned. “I came back from getting my drinks – which some idiot spilled all over me, I wish I caught who it was, to find you gone. I worked so hard on setting this up and getting it perfectly _right,_ and then you disappear like that.”

“From what Yoshimi told me, it sounds like you bolted like an idiot,” Mitsuko laughed. Hirono gave her a glare, snatched her cigarette, and stomped it under her boot, knowing it was rare for her to have some of her own. She usually asked Hirono for one, too lazy to get her own, but she was going to be out of business for awhile.

“Who asked you to comment?” Hirono snapped at her, but her voice soon lost its frostiness, “uh, yeah… I bolted, I guess… and it was me that bumped into you. Just… Yoshimi saw the meme dress and I panicked and well… yeah.”

“Well, we all make our mistakes, I guess,” Sho sighed. “That doesn’t count for my jacket and shirt, though. That was unacceptable. If those stains don’t come out, you’re buying me replacements. Hopefully Haruka doesn’t think you’re crazy, otherwise any hopes of Hiroharu are screwed.”

“WILL YOU STOP CALLING US THAT?” Hirono yelled at him, making Mitsuko snort with laughter. Before Hirono could yell at her, a loud, almost painful to hear, crunch captured her attention.

“Oops…” Mitsuko looked down at Desmond, which had split in half. There was a hole in him, and one of his eyes was missing. “Guess it’s time to give it back to Motobuchi. This has no use to me anymore.”

Yoshimi, Sho and Hirono just stood there for a moment, watching Mitsuko disappear from view holding the broken pieces of what used to be Desmond. Sho was the first to snap out of it, and turned to Hirono and Yoshimi quickly. A disaster was looming.

“We have to stop her. If Motobuchi sees what happened to Des- um, his dumb umbrella, our whole class will never hear the end of this,” Sho said.

“Let’s go,” Hirono replied, grateful the mall disaster was forgotten for now. She, Sho and Yoshimi began to run in the direction they saw Mitsuko go, hoping it wasn’t too late. They yelled out for her to stop, but they had completely lost sight of her. Sadly, they doubted that their words would make her stop, anyway, but they still tried.

They did not find Mitsuko. Instead, they found pieces of poor Desmond strewn across the floor, and Kyoichi weeping on the floor, missing his friend more than ever. Hirono looked on, and simply shook her head.

“Well, this was more of a disaster than yesterday, wasn’t it?”

 


End file.
